> We're trying to put an old server to good use again and would > like to know what's exactly the oldest machine running OpenBSD?
As most others started out on the details, i will start with the generalities: Unless you have special needs or you must serve some large or very busy network, taking what people give you for free will usually be more than you need. For example, i'm running a small network for about 20-50 users (depending on how you count) and about 20 computers, and i never bought any hardware for the internet servers, neither for the firewall nor for the bastion host (web- and mailserver), except a couple of cheap fast ethernet cards. Until about three years ago, the firewall was a 486 SX-25, 16 MB RAM, 200 MB HD (partioned 100 MB /var for logs and 100 MB / incl. /usr; the root partition was 80% empty, i.e. the OS was stripped down to roughly 20 MB grand total. Don't do that today.) At that time, people did complain about the slowness of the workstations (typically 600-900 MHz PIII and PIV boxen), but i do not remember any complaints about the speed of the internet connection. The 25 MHz / 16 MB machine managed to keep up our 100 Mbit/s external link without any problems noticable to average users. Until about a month ago, the firewall was a 133 MHz Pentium, 32 MB RAM, 2 GB HD, standard install and plenty of free space. Today, i'm using an AMD K6 233 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 4 GB HD. People urged me to use it because the fan is less noisy, not because the 133 MHz machine was slow. The main web- and mailserver is a PIII 633 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 4 GB root disk, 40 GB data disk. The box typically passes 5.000 E-Mail messages per day (including SpamAssassin), and it is running a variety of different CMSes for different websites. Well, Zope and Joomla and MediaWiki are not exactly fast, but people did not seriously complain, yet. If your machine in question has at least 32 MB RAM and 800 MB HD, try it, unless you have special needs. Otherwise, talk somebody into giving you a better one. Stripping down the base system to fit on a 200 MB disk or stripping down the kernel to save part of your precious 16 MB of RAM is a very bad idea, nowadays. Such a system is possible and will serve most simple needs, but it will take lots of time to build, it will be unnecessarily difficult to maintain and you will occasionally suffer downtime because you forgot some file your applications require, even if you are in general rather careful.
